The game will debut on Wednesday on both Facebook as well as Zynga's own Zynga.com platform, which will feature both head-to-head mode as well as timed challenges, said Mark Turmell, the game's senior creative director, in an interview. Zynga tipped the new game in its most recent earnings call.

The game's premise is simple: poachers have stolen the girlfriend (or monkeyfriend) of Bubbles the Monkey. It's his job to follow the trail left by the poachers, avoiding traps and other hazards scattered across a number of levels.

Turmell's legacy includes "NBA Jam," a 1993 Midway arcade that Turmell architected as the lead programmer and designer. Since then, of course, the arcade's importance has faded from its highs in the 1980s and 1990s, giving way to home gaming consoles and then to online games. But, like NBA Jam, if a "Bubbles" player rattles off three consecutive shots in a row, he or she will enter an "On Fire" mode, where flaming shots destroy several targets at once.

"It sounds simple to say, but this is really the future," Turmell said. "Arcade games have always been social, and Zynga is supremely positioned. Our focus, our foundation, has been to develop available, approachable games."

Zynga has been accused before of copying games, although sources within the company have claimed that they have merely developed "genre games". Regardless, the "match 3" genre has been heavily mined.

The player controls a monkey, shooting fruit at a "rack" of colored balls overhead. Matching the colored balls causes them to fall and for fruit to appear, falling into one of three baskets. Collect enough fruit, and the player wins the level. Players can play as many times as they like, and there's apparently no "energy," the turn-limiting device of other "-Ville" games within the Zynga stable.

Likewise, Bubbles Safari is not timed, Turmell said.

Naturally, there are social elements. When a user logs in and begins playing, the game checks to see if the player's friends are as well. If so, a small bar appears to the upper left, and the two players can "swap" a colored ball back and forth in real time, helping them out strategically. Users can also email gifts.

Collect enough fruit, perform enough combinations, and achieve enough "big drops" of fruit, and a "Boost Bubble" will be unlocked, offering additional powerups, including lightning, sticky bombs, "double rainbows," and coconuts. Turmell said it is the strategic use of these powerups, including the "on fire" mode, that unlocks the strategic value of the game. Likewise, hazards appear, including beehives that can cause your monkey to launch random balls when stung, and "spawners" that keep popping out balls.

Moreover, Bubbles Safari isn't a "play-to-win" game, where users eventually need to pay for virtual items, Turmell said. He claimed that each level could be beaten just by the existing balls. "And, once you beat it, you can play for free, forever," he added.

Zynga said that Bubble Safari was technically its second "action" game, following Zynga Slingo, a combination of slots and bingo.

Mark Hachman Mark joined ExtremeTech in 2001 as the news editor, after rival CMP/United Media decided at the time that online news did not make sense in the new millennium.
Mark stumbled into his career after discovering that writing the great American novel did not pay a monthly salary, and that his other possible career choice, physics, required a degree of mathematical prowess that he sorely lacked.
Mark talked his way into a freelance assignment at CMP’s Electronic Buyers’ News, in 1995, where he wrote the...
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